Carmel couple's home waterlogged by Cal Am leak

CARMEL &GT;&GT; Next to a rubber hose intermittently gushing water into a Carmel gutter and down a nearby storm drain is a small makeshift cardboard sign reading: "Free water for your yard. 800 gal per day and Cal Am can't find the leak. Please don't move the hose. (Don't drink it.)"

For more than a month now, Carmel residents Mike and Dia Rianda have been dealing with a steady flow of water leaking onto their 11th Avenue property and under their home, which lies near the bottom of a draw at the southern end of Carmel.

After weeks of fruitless efforts by California American Water workers and an independent contractor they hired to find the source of the flow, the Riandas dug a hole, stuck a sump pump in and began sucking the water up. Without a way to use all the thousands of gallons of water they estimated is being pumped out, the couple said they felt they had no other alternative but to dump it literally down the drain.

Besides dealing with a weeks-long saga of leak investigations, the potential damage to their home and plain old stress, Dia Rianda said the loss of so much water in the midst of a historically dry year on the already water short Monterey Peninsula is a tragedy.

"What I find disconcerting is we're in the middle of a drought and it's just wrong that that much water is flowing and no one is really willing to do anything about it," she said. "We're frustrated because we can't fix the house until we fix the (water flow) problem."

Cal Am spokeswoman Catherine Stedman said the company has been working diligently on the problem and has already located a nearby leak that could have been a source of at least some of the flow onto the Riandas' property. But Stedman also acknowledged the problem may not be completely addressed yet because the flow does not appear to have completely stopped and said Cal Am is planning to bring in an outside leak detection firm.

"It's a step-by-step process of elimination," Stedman said. "We're still working on it."

The Riandas, who are already in the midst of protracted whistleblower litigation involving USA Swimming, said they received virtually no satisfactory response from Cal Am when they first found water seeping out of the ground on their property and reported it.

Dia Rianda said Cal Am's workers insisted for weeks that it must be a leak on their property, then suggested the water could be coming from a "natural spring" under their home. It was weeks later before Cal Am acknowledged the water was coming from their service lines and found, and fixed, the nearby leak.

"The whole strategy was putting it on us," she said. "It's ridiculous how they treated us from a customer's perspective."

Mike Rianda said it took Cal Am workers three weeks to figure out the water was coming from a leak off the property and it was only after he threatened to go to the press before Tuesday's election, which featured a public takeover attempt, that Cal Am found the leak.

Cal Am's Monterey operations manager Roger Hulbert said company workers went through a typical "step-by-step process of elimination" to determine the source of the leak, a process that is still continuing.

"Staff took this seriously immediately," Hulbert said. "I don't think anyone said this is not our problem."

While the Riandas said their water bills never spiked like other Cal Am customers have experienced in leak-related situations, they said they do have considerable damage to their home, which has experienced flooded heater ducts and mold. They said their homeowners insurance carrier will handle any negotiations with Cal Am over the cost of repairs. Stedman agreed the company would work with the couple's insurance if an investigation ultimately shows it was at fault.

Rianda said another home in the neighborhood, currently unoccupied, also has water under its foundation, and she's wondering if Cal Am has any idea the extent of the leak issue.

Stedman said Cal Am's investigation has not revealed any unusually high usage in the vicinity thus far.

Ironically, both Riandas said they voted against Measure O earlier this week, arguing that while they are not fans of Cal Am they couldn't support a public buy-out because the alternative would be worse.